Tuesday, August 11, 2009

I haven't been posting much lately, and there's a reason. I've been busy writing a new book. And it's ready for the reading public. The title is Common Law & Natural Rights: The Question of Conservative Foundations, and it is an examination of natural rights as the foundation for conservatism, as opposed to the common law. It is the contention of the book that natural rights has served neither conservatism nor contemporary polities well. The reliance on natural rights and its daughter, the separation of powers, has led to overweening government, based on absolute democracy. The common law as a self-contained, independent bulwark of liberty is proposed as the alternative. For more information, follow this link.

Regarding the Stahl book on constitutional law, it is nearly finished. I hope to have it ready for publication within a month or two. Stay tuned.

3 comments:

I’ve skimmed the Introduction of Common Law and Natural Rights. and it looks very good.

Query: I’m speaking at a conference in November on the place of “religious theory” in legal scholarship. I’m going to address human rights in light of N. Wolterstorff’s book Justice. W. is what you might characterize as a “thick” natural rights guy, emphasizing the foundation of rights in our creation in the image of God. He does some good historical work on the development of rights in the Western tradition and some very good biblical exegesis/theologizing. But it’s still NR, IMHO.

What would you say to the question of whether there can be any global scheme of rights without a shared global history of Roman law/Christian religion influence? There must be something (I believe) fundamental about the human condition (as revealed in the Bible) that warrants some sort of a universalizeable assertion of human rights. But I may be wrong. Let me know your thoughts